Important Information Regarding New Form 5500 Schedule Form 8955-SSA

As readers may be aware, a qualified retirement plan or a Section 403(b) retirement plan is generally required to report information about separated participants with deferred vested benefits under the plan. The Internal Revenue Service has recently developed Form 8955-SSA to allow a plan administrator to fulfill its obligation to report this information. The following Alert discusses the Form 8955-SSA requirement, as well as the requirement to distribute an individual statement to a deferred vested participant, to which the issuance of the Form 8955-SSA has drawn renewed attention.

New Form 8955-SSA

Until recently, information regarding deferred vested participants was reported on a Schedule SSA (Annual Registration Statement Identifying Separated Participants With Deferred Vested Benefits) to a plan's Form 5500 annual return/report. However, in order to accommodate the U.S. Department of Labor's mandate to file Form 5500s electronically, the Schedule SSA was